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Determination of the Superconducting Gap Structure in All Bands of the Spin-Triplet Superconductor Sr2RuO4

Kazuhiko Deguchi·Zhiqiang Mao·Yoshiteru Maeno
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Abstract

We have obtained strong experimental evidence for the full determination of the superconducting gap structure in all three bands of the spin-triplet superconductor Sr2RuO4 for the first time. We have extended the measurements of the field-orientation dependent specific heat to include conical field rotations consisting of in-plane azimuthal angle phi-sweeps at various polar angles theta performed down to 0.1 K. Clear 4-fold oscillations of the specific heat and a rapid suppression of it by changing theta are explained only by a compensation from two types of bands with anti-phase gap anisotropies with each other. The results indicate that the active band, responsible for the superconducting instability, is the gamma-band with the lines of gap minima along the [100] directions, and the passive band is the alpha- and beta-bands with the lines of gap minima or zeros along the [110] directions in their induced superconducting gaps. We also demonstrated the scaling of the specific heat for the field in the c-direction, which supports the line-node-like gap structures running along the kz direction.

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Kazuhiko Deguchi, Zhiqiang Mao, Yoshiteru Maeno. 2004-05-13. Determination of the Superconducting Gap Structure in All Bands of the Spin-Triplet Superconductor Sr2RuO4. https://doi.org/10.1143/jpsj.73.1313

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